


What Do You Get a Ghost for Christmas?

by starmelee



Category: Mystery Skulls Animated
Genre: Fluff, Gift Fic, I put one swearword in here, Lance is only briefly mentioned but oh well, Multi, This is literally all wholesome I hope you like it, au? i guess?, just one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:01:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28307196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starmelee/pseuds/starmelee
Summary: Arthur has had many Christmases with his friends. But now that he's unsure of his relationship dynamic with Lewis... well, it makes everything more difficult, not limited to gifts. But gifts aren't the only good thing about the holidays.
Relationships: Arthur/Lewis/Vivi (Mystery Skulls Animated)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 41





	What Do You Get a Ghost for Christmas?

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This was for a MSA gift exchange on Tumblr, so, to my giftee: I hope this was what you wanted! It was my absolute pleasure to write for you and I hope you have a good holiday!

Arthur was nervous about this year’s Christmas. He knew that Vivi would love whatever he gave or made for her because, well, that had never changed in their time as friends. She was always equally happy to receive a gift, but the quickest way to her heart was through her stomach. So, he always made her cookies on Christmas eve and sometimes made her a small trinket to keep around. This year, he made her a new baseball bat engraved with a middle finger. (He knew it was going to be a hit (ba dum, tsshh) so he wasn’t worried.) 

Mystery was easy enough, too. Even though things had been strained for… well, for a long enough time, Arthur knew that he could grab a toy and any kind of treat and they’d be set for the year. Maybe he’d be able to play with him around the tree.

But Lewis. Lewis made him nervous. What do you give to a ghost who may or may not be over the fact that a demon used you as a vessel for murder? He couldn’t make the ghost food, not that any of it would be good enough to compare to his cooking anyway, and Arthur couldn’t give him anything he might have considered getting before without looking like a huge prick. Things had been strained between them, too. So much so that Arthur wasn’t exactly sure where they even stood. Lewis might try to smile and laugh everything off, but Arthur could feel that there was something unresolved between them. 

So now, Arthur was agonizing over this gift. He wanted to set things right again, and that would take time, but what was he supposed to do? It was a week until Christmas, and he just had no ideas. He had nothing. Vivi and Mystery’s gifts were already wrapped and tucked away. But Lewis also deserved to receive something. Arthur needed a plan.

Lance really had nothing to offer, but that didn't surprise him all that much. Arthur had to admit that seeing his uncle was a shot in the dark, since the man was so out of touch with “the youths” and all that, but seeing him did help soothe a sort of ache he hadn’t noticed. Maybe he needed to start setting aside for time for his uncle more often. But the point of the visit was to pop into his room and see if anything in any of his notebooks would give him the inspiration he needed to figure out what he could give Lewis. 

Old blueprints, setups for Galahad, nothing useful really struck him. He was about to quit when he noticed the corner of a picture frame buried in wires and tiny old squares of sheet metal. He brushed a few things aside and unearthed the frame rather easily. Inside was a picture of the three of them (five, if you counted Mystery and Galahad) crowded at the back of the van after their first trip together. They looked kind of gross, and Arthur looked exhausted sandwiched between Vivi and Lew, but they were all smiling and holding on to each other. 

He had an idea. 

On Christmas eve, he was finally wrapping Lewis’s gift. It was perfect, though much larger than he’d intended for it to be. It cost him a little extra, but he figured it would fit in with everything else that Lewis deemed to be the aesthetic of the mansion. 

It was enveloped in a dark wooden frame, and the painting in the center was one he had to have Lance call in a favor for since it was so last minute; but now, the artistically rendered version of the image he’d been looking at the other day was firmly wrapped and hidden in the sparkly snow wrapping paper he got. It may have been bold of him to try and assert that they could be that close again, but maybe he was hoping. 

Lewis and Vivi had been stronger than ever in their relationship, and as much as Arthur yearned to be a part of it, he knew better than to let it get the best of him. All he could do was hope that they could all be friends. That he would be allowed to stay. 

Christmas morning was nice. A fine layer of snow appeared outside overnight, and their tree was tall, wrapped top to bottom in lights, and properly adorned (by Vivi’s standards, of course). The gifts were all resting underneath when the four of them wandered into the living room. 

“Good morning!” Vivi grinned, “Merry Christmas!” 

“Merry Christmas,” the boys chuckled back, awkwardly looking at each other for a moment before just focusing on Vivi. 

Vivi was already holding her gifts to them in her hands. “Can I go first? Please?” Usually it was a struggle to see who could give their gifts first, rather than open them. Vivi and Lewis used to do yearly rock-paper-scissors tournaments, but it seemed like this year, Lewis was letting her go first. 

Arthur gently unwrapped his despite Vivi’s encouragement to ‘rip it open like it was a guy in a zombie movie’ and found a book. The binding was plain, navy blue, and when he opened it, he found that it was empty. 

“You always say that you never have enough places to sketch and design stuff without losing everything, so I figured if I got you the thickest book I could find with the best paper I could get it in, then maybe you wouldn’t lose your stuff so often. The paper is supposed to be smudge resistant, I think, but we’ll have to test it.” She grinned, and he felt his heart melt. 

“Thanks, Viv, this is going to be a lifesaver.” He watched her smile grow and he smiled back. 

Lewis tore open his gift, as instructed, and Arthur watched him lift a bundle of utensils from the remnants of the paper. 

It was a new kitchenware set, already out of the box because Vivi liked to make things difficult. Arthur knew that they didn't have one in the mansion, but he figured it would be rude to get one. Obviously, she thought otherwise.

“I know you miss cooking for us, and I know you definitely miss having the proper tools to do it, so I figured I’d put the power back in your hands. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I feel like you want to,” she winked, and Lewis chuckled. 

“Thanks, Vi. I guess I do miss it. Especially because cold pizza is not breakfast.” The ghost pointedly looked to Arthur. 

He scoffed, shaking his head. “Cold pizza is breakfast. It has a starch, it has a dairy product, it has a fruit, and my pizza has proteins in it. It gets all the basic food groups.” 

“You’re impossible,” Lewis smiled at him, and he smiled back, and then a gift was being pressed into his hands again by the ghost himself. 

Vivi was already tearing into hers before they could even really think about it, and she pulled an amulet from the box she found in the paper. It was a yellow heart. And when she opened it, Arthur watched tears rush to her eyes. 

“Arthur, open it,” Lewis nudged him. 

He looked into his lap, where the red paper gleamed under the white bow. Did he honestly deserve anything from either of them? No. But he wanted to. So he let himself find the creases in the paper and pull it apart. Inside was a small box, and something rattled inside when he pulled it out and held it up. 

Inside was a pendant that looked a hell of a lot like Vivi’s. Yellow. Heart-shaped. Locket. And when he looked at the picture, it was one of the three of them from their first night sleeping in the van. He was attached to Lewis’s right side and Vivi was on his left, and the three of them were grinning to the camera like the sneaky little kids they were. 

“Arthur, there’s something we need to tell you.” He looked up to see Lewis pull Vivi to his side, and the two of them smiled at him. They looked like a perfect couple. 

But his brow furrowed. This was a weird time to have an announcement. “Uh, okay?” 

“We care about you, like, a lot,” Vivi said, “and we’ve noticed that lately, it feels like nothing is right without you.” 

Lewis nodded. “There’s a lot to unpack here, still, with everything that happened and that we went through. But we want you to… Viv how did you say it?” 

She stepped forward and took the pendant from Arthur, placing it around his neck and clasping it. “We want you to make us a trio, cutie. I’ve wanted to kiss you for like, three years, Lewis has wanted to kiss you for even longer, and I think that it’s about time we admitted it.” 

Arthur’s brain went completely blank as he tried to comprehend what was happening here. “I- what?” 

“Will you be our boyfriend?” Lewis asked, chuckling. 

He was picking up fragments, and he felt tears rush to his eyes as excitement flooded him. “Will I? Me. Arthur Kingsman? For real?” 

Vivi huffed, but he could tell it was more in jest than actual impatience. “Yes! You idiot! Yes! Just please answer us already because I want breakfast!” 

“Fucking- jeez, duh? Of course! I-I’d love that- are you sure?” 

The two people in front of him laughed before he suddenly had a lap full of girl, he had a pair of strong, ghostly arms around him, and he had a heart full of love. 

The next evening, Mystery fell asleep under the new portrait hung above the fireplace in the sitting room, while his three friends all fell asleep on the couch nearby. They were tangled in each other, and two of them would be really sore when they woke up, but all of them would know it was worth it.


End file.
